The heat at Madrid is excessive, and breaks out suddenly without any spring to prepare people for it. This has given rise to the saying with regard to the temperature of Madrid: "Three months of winter, and nine months of ----:" the reader can perhaps supply the deficiency. It is impossible to protect yourself from this flood of fire otherwise than by remaining in low rooms, which are almost buried in complete obscurity, and where the humidity is constantly kept up by a continual watering. This craving for coolness has given rise to the fashion of having _bucaros_, a savage and strange piece of refinement which would certainly possess no charm for our French ladies, but which appears to the Spanish beauties to be a most useful and elegant invention. The _bucaros_ are a sort of pot, formed of red American earth, rather similar to that of which the bowls of Turkish pipes are formed; they are of all sizes and of all forms, some being gilt along the rims, and decorated with coarsely-painted flowers. As they are no longer manufactured in America, these _bucaros_ are becoming very scarce, and in a few years will be as fabulous and as difficult to be met with as old Sèvres china; of course when this is the case, every one will want to possess some. The manner of using the _bucaros_ is as follows:--Six or eight of them are placed upon small marble tables or the projecting ledges round the room, and filled with water. You then retire to a sofa, in order to wait until they produce the customary effect and to enjoy it with the proper degree of calm. The clay soon assumes a deeper tint, the water penetrates through its pores, and the _bucaros_ begin to perspire, and emit a kind of perfume which is very like the odour of wet mortar, or of a damp cellar that has not been opened for some time. This perspiration of the _bucaros_ is so profuse, that at the expiration of an hour half the water has evaporated. That which is left has got a nauseous, earthy, cisterny taste, which is, however, pronounced delicious by the _aficionados_. Half-a-dozen _bucaros_ are sufficient to charge the air of a drawing-room with such an amount of humidity that it immediately chills any one entering the apartment, and may be considered as a kind of cold vapour-bath. Not content with merely enjoying the perfume and drinking the water, some persons chew small pieces of the _bucaros_, which they swallow after having reduced them to powder.